Race/ethnicity in the USA in the early 1800s?

For a TL I'm writing, I need some information on ethnic demographics in the United States between 1812 and 1860. Even small bits of information would be helpful since I'm struggling to find anything. I'm assuming it was quite radically different before larger European and Catholic immigration in the late 1800s?

Thanks for any help you all can give!
 
Well, you can look to the censuses, which should be accurate except for the Native Americans, I suspect. It includes white populations, slave populations, and "free colored" populations, as well as "foreigners not naturalized".

If it tickles your fancy, there's information from 1850 on about country of origin of immigrants as well.

I do understand that the 1830 census is considered to be somewhat unreliable, though, due to a lack of standardization in forms.

http://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/hiscendata.html
 
Some basic trends are that the black population was always near 50%, and the white population was overwhelmingly of British descent, with English heritage along the seaboard and Scottish or Scotch-Irish ancestry dominant in the back country. Pennsylvania and a few other places had large German populations, and other Europeans were scattered around - Dutch descendants were still common around New York, a few Swedish and Finnish descendants in Delaware, French Catholics in Louisiana, the old forts along the Mississippi, and the Quebec border area, etc. French Huguenots were everywhere.
 
Some basic trends are that the black population was always near 50%, and the white population was overwhelmingly of British descent, with English heritage along the seaboard and Scottish or Scotch-Irish ancestry dominant in the back country. Pennsylvania and a few other places had large German populations, and other Europeans were scattered around - Dutch descendants were still common around New York, a few Swedish and Finnish descendants in Delaware, French Catholics in Louisiana, the old forts along the Mississippi, and the Quebec border area, etc. French Huguenots were everywhere.

50%? I don't think it was ever above 20% of the national total.
 
Top